A FUNNY THING HAPPENED IN MY BEDROOMA Memoir My older sister used to love to scare me, something older sisters did, in fun, many years ago. We shared a bedroom and she had the twin bed closest to the door. This gave her a power of sorts that she could use on occasion to keep me in my place as her "little sister." Her bed being near the door meant that I had to scurry around the foot of her bed to get to mine, which fact I accomplished by several frantic leaps through the air followed by an exhausted plop onto my bed. "Please, let me climb over your bed." I pleaded, time and again. But my sister used her power as the older and bigger sister with full authority. "No, you have to walk around my bed, and be careful the man under it doesn’t grab your legs." Then she would sigh wickedly from the safety of her covers and watch me perform my nightly, terrorized maneuvers. Fearfully, I’d run the race, night after night, but my sister never weakened…after all, she was the boss. Until one night, the tables were finally turned. I had just jumped into my bed after narrowly escaping from the man under my sister’s bed, when there was a horrid flapping, tearing noise. The cloth roll-up window shade had let go and was whirling and twisting around at the top of the window. I looked at my sister’s bed and saw that she had disappeared. There was nothing showing but the top of her head and the bed seemed to be quivering and shaking along with the shade on the window. Seeing her this frightened made me laugh and I laughed and laughed so hard that I could barely keep from peeing in my bed. How wonderful to see that my big sister was really a little girl who could be frightened by something as silly as a flapping shade. To this day, more than 70 years later, we still laugh over that ridiculous incident. Now that we are grown up we no longer have a power struggle and make no attempt to frighten each other. We are equals, loving sisters, and even better, we are the best of friends.
© Liz Kollar 2003. |